Ace of Spades is having none of it. He points out that the reason why Trump is popular among certain Republican voters is precisely because he does not care what establishment Republicans (like Lewis) think of him.

My problem with Lewis’ piece is that he continues — as so many corporate/establishment conservatives do — to assume that the conservatives they don’t like are just stupid Followers of Entertainment Wing demagogues, and if those demagogues could just be persuaded to change their tunes, the stupid Followers would finally Do the Right Thing (which continues to be Following, but this time they’d be Following the correct orders, these orders approved by Corporate/Establishment Central)…

Still, this whole idea that the Out Group — the Other — is just a band of fucking idiots who get off on Hate and Talk Radio and do whatever the disembodied voices on the Talking Box tell him to do is part of the problem…

I will continue to say this: If the Establishment wants to end the Trump Rebellion, then they should talk a lot less — stop issuing orders, stop putting out plans as to How to Make the Crazies Understand Reason — and start listening for once in their fucking lives.

The Republican Party Coalition, which looked so strong a decade ago, is in tatters on the national level: middle class conservatives against big money conservatives, politicians against their own voting base, religious conservatives left out in the cold.

The split really started in 2006 when middle-class conservatives decided to stay home during the mid-term elections, handing Congress to the Democrats. Then came the Tea Party which, contrary to popular belief, was not so much an anti-Obama movement as it was a way for those angry middle-class conservatives to hold Republican politicians accountable. Republican politicians played a role in neutralizing the Tea Party movement, because accountability is a politician’s worst nightmare.

Now the Republican establishment is surprised that the voters they hate so much are cheering for someone who does not give a crap.

Not that the Democrats are fairing much better. They are as weak on the local level as the Republicans are on the national. Their establishment candidate, Secretary Clinton, is an uninspiring choice: cold, mendacious, greedy and aloof. Bernie Sanders raises little enthusiasm outside elderly white leftists. Black activists and younger feminists to whom the left has been pandering during the Obama administration are uninterested in Clinton or Sanders, and their demands are becoming more shrill and divorced from reality. (Witness the bizzare heckling Sanders and O’Malley suffered at Netroots Nation.)

Ace concludes:

Hey, I thought these Establishment Types were supposed to be the Super-Experts on How to Be Smart at Politics and Win All the Things?

How come they can’t go five minutes without stepping on their own dicks?

American politics are unstable right now. It will be interesting to see how all this works out.